Tower 44
by Ms. W. Watson
Summary: A short story for my father. So he can be young just one more time...


For my Pops, who wanted to be young again. This story is for you…

Tower 44

It was hot. But that was summer in West Texas. Middle of July no less. Hot and dry.

A remarkably liberating rush of wind picked up from the south; it blew through David's sweat-soaked shirt. The sweat provided a nice layer of captive liquid to cool his skin. It was a small thing. That highly localized cooling. But you take what you can get in these summers.

David smiled anyway. He looked up to the horizon. The blue skies stretched out to eternity. They seemed to mock the idea that the earth was round in any way. If he kept walking, he may never reach the end.

But that's part of the illusion out in the grasslands, in the prairies. He knew that. He'd seen miles and miles of dusty brown landscapes, miles and miles of desert-hardy brush and scattered trees. Most of the open plains now were rows of crops, farmland, even fields of wind turbines. And of course, all the new homes, all the new towns. But he'd grown up when the land was still virginal. And you could only tell which highway you were on by the color and fullness of the tips of the cotton bushes.

The old railroad tracks stretched out to meet the sky in the distance. The steel rails, the wooden ties, they felt solid and old beneath his feet. He'd been walking for…he didn't know how long. Maybe an hour. It was easy to lose track of time out here. But the darkening skies were hinting on twilight.

He stopped walking, lifted up his arm, went to roll back his sleeve but paused.

"Maybe just a while longer," he said quietly and smiled, then let the dirtied white dress-shirt fall back over his watch.

He was dressed real nice today. It was his second family reunion. So many of his loved ones had come and go over the years and decades. Come and go…go and come, though too many had _gone_. Mother, father, aunts, uncles, friends. At least his children were still alive. He was grateful for that. Though he'd give one of them back for at least one grandchild.

The first family reunion, fifteen years ago, had been held in a hotel outside Dallas. This time, the reunion was taking place not half a mile from his childhood home. It may have been the year 2014, but out in the prairie, it felt like fifty, sixty, years ago to him. Even the last rays of the beating sun, the biting black flies, and dry winds could not sway his opinion of this fine night. The subtle smell of mesquite brush and wildflowers floated along the winds. He reached down, ran his fingers through the tops of the feathery switchgrass as he walked. The green stalks and white opaque tips ran along the length of the railroad now. Seeming to overrun it in places. The tracks hadn't been used in a long while.

His smile widened as he spotted it. Tower 44. The signaling tower was built in the early twentieth century. It was one of the unmanned train stations. For some of the less frequently traveled tracks, it didn't make sense to pay some poor fella to sit around for days at a time, simply waiting for a train to pass. So the towers existed solely for the purpose of providing a manual switch at a crossing. When a train approached, if they didn't have the 'clear' signal, the crew could switch the tracks in their favor. This was, of course, before everything was automated or electronically controlled.

David had spent many afternoons sitting on the edge of the tower platform, watching trains roll by, chewing on the ends of switchgrass; his much younger legs swinging over the edge, hour after hour. And there on the back side of the tower, nestled between the two rail-lines, was a lake. And on that lake he'd spent many a summer. Fishing, taking dips in the cool sections, boating, water skiing (back when two wooden slats and rubber booties were high-tech), and entertaining many girls on the shore by bonfires. Well…there weren't _that_ many girls. But his mind liked to fluff the memory of his charms.

He stood directly inside the crossing of the two rail lines for a moment. He looked left; that track went all the way to Kansas, through Oklahoma. The one to the right, through Arkansas then on to Missouri. Though he guessed much of the track had been dismantled as towns and cities grew up around the old rail lines.

As a child, he had befriended many of the drivers as they came to the crossing. As every driver had to stop their trains, get out and operate the crossing manually. Especially that of the "Gray Mary"–so named by its driver, Nick Addison. As David recalled those many years ago, Nick would come through the crossing every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, at exactly 5:04PM. When David was ten, he'd been sitting on the platform, pondering the purpose of life, when the Gray Mary had first stopped. Nick had exited the train, stared down on the blue-eyed boy as he took the stairs to the top of the tower. Nick said nothing to him. On Nick's next pass through town, David was there again, and still they said nothing to each other. The boy eyeing the man curiously. The man eyeing the boy suspiciously. For weeks, it was the same.

One day, David was late getting to the crossing. He'd been in a fight. One of many in his childhood. As he raced down the track, expecting to see only the billows of the departing Gray Mary, he was surprised. Nick was sitting on the platform, his grown-up booted feet dangling from the edge.

"Son…where ya been?" Nick asked after a few moments of silence.

David remembered that first conversation with such clarity, such fondness.

His younger self shrugged, "Dunno."

Nick jutted his chin toward David's face, without pointing out the obvious. "Got in a fight, didn't ya?"

David, the boy, shrugged again, self-consciously rubbing at the untreated cut on his forehead, his fingers coming away red. "I guess I did, sir."

David climbed up on the platform next to Nick, but not too close. They were both silent for another moment.

"Well? Did ya win?" Nick asked him.

"I suppose I did. Knocked him flat on his," David paused, eyeing Nick shrewdly. "Well, you know where."

Nick laughed despite himself. "I hope he did somethin' to deserve that."

"Johnson is always pickin' on girls. It ain't right."

Nick nodded as if he understood.

The two sat in the late afternoon sun for some time. Talking about the Indian summer. Talking about the cotton belt lines. Talking about nothing at all.

David remembered Nick fondly. They'd shared many late afternoons together, for years. Until Nick simply didn't show up one day, one week. Or the next. Or the next, or the next. David had been about fifteen then. He never knew what happened to his friend.

David looked left and right again, deciding to continue his trek toward Kansas. He put one foot forward. And a strange thing happened. The area in front of him shimmered and vibrated. Like there was a giant invisible shower curtain between him and the next old rotted wooden railway tie. He drew his foot back carefully, put his hands on hips.

"Well…what in the hell?" he whispered, squinting at the air in front of him. He took one finger, pressed it forward. Watching in awe as that invisible shower curtain responded. It jiggled like a giant flat jello mold. Slowly but surely as his index finger pressed then drew back. Pressed then drew back.

He looked down at his finger. It seemed fine. He wondered, briefly, if senility wasn't setting in early. He decided to brave more. He pressed his hand, fingers outstretched, through the air, through the invisible barrier. What happened next took his breath away. He could see his hand on the other side of the barrier. It was not the same hand. The fingers were small and skinny; the hand was paler and lightly freckled. He drew it back quickly. Examining his right hand very carefully. There was the hand he knew now. Bigger, the skin tanned and mottled with sun spots and wrinkles, the knuckles a little bigger from fighting arthritis.

He tested it, stretching his fingers out as far as they'd go, making a fist. It was still a good, strong hand. He wiggled his fingers and smiled wide, feeling very brave, then put his hand through the barrier again. He performed the same tests on the other side; it was still his hand, just many years younger. He barely recognized it as his own.

He took a deep breath and put more of his arm through the barrier, then one of his legs, then his chest, then his whole body.

"Holy…" David looked down on his body. He was wearing different clothes. Just a white t-shirt and jeans and tennis shoes. And the ground…it was a couple of feet closer! His feet were smaller. His legs, still lanky and long, but so many years younger. He felt his face. Given what he was seeing and feeling, he couldn't be more than twelve or thirteen years old. David stepped back through the barrier to other side. Instantly growing a couple feet, instantly filling out to his adult self. He stepped back over, feeling his younger body again, his lungs taking in air with more vigor, his limbs all supple and not used so much. He performed the task twice more, stopping on the younger side.

"Hey! You gonna pick a side, or do the two-step all day long?"

David startled as another boy jumped down from the tower platform.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Who do ya think?" the boy asked back, squinting at David and chewing on the end of his own blade of switchgrass.

"Nick?" David asked seeing the scar running down the left side of Nick's neck. Nick told David those many years ago that he'd received the scar after getting in a fight with his dad. He had never forgotten that story.

"Holy shit!" David said, seeing the tower was also in its younger state. Newly painted white shingles, small thatch roof, and no rot anywhere. It was exactly as his younger eyes remembered.

It would seem, that David had stepped back in time. And somehow, Nick had stepped back with him. He was sure that Nick was dead by now. As far as David knew, he had died those years ago. But there he was, looking as solid and young as David himself. As real as the ground, as real as the new tracks beneath his feet, as real as the perfect cloudless blue sky above them.

"Whoa! Kiss your momma with that mouth?" Nick teased him, spitting the grass onto the tracks and turning. "Come on! We got a whole day. It rained last night. There's bound to be tons of frogs washed up on the shore," Nick said, running some feet ahead up the track. He looked back over his shoulder, his back turned to David, his young chest already pointed toward the lake. "Don't worry so much," he said, reading David's mind. David's family, his children would miss him. They'd be worried. And they'd come looking.

"They'll never even know you're gone. I promise," Nick said, still smiling. "Let's go, man!"

David's grin split his face wide as his feet propelled him forward like a rocket. The two boys already laughing and kicking up dirt as they took to the tracks.

…He would carouse. He would play. He would run. He would swim. This next day was his. He would return an old man. But this next twenty-four hours–he would be a kid again. He would cherish every second.


End file.
